Join our guest host, Kelly Chandler, as she talks with Dr. Rachel Yoho about how we can make our syllabi more inclusive of all learners and us as the instructor in the first of our “Hear From Your Host” series.
Resources: Eberly, M. B., Newton, S. E., & Wiggins, R. A. (2001). The syllabus as a tool for student-centered learning. The Journal of General Education, 50(1), 56–74., Bers, T., Davis, D., & Taylor, W. (1996). Syllabus analysis: What are we teaching and telling our students?. Assessment Update, 8(6), 1-14., References on first impressions, demonstrating values, and use as a learning tool: https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/explore-teaching-guides/inclusive-teaching-guide/planning-inclusive-course/building-inclusive https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/designing-inclusive-syllabus/ References on course policies: https://learninginnovation.duke.edu/resources/art-and-science-of-teaching/creating-an-inclusive-and-equitable-course/ George Mason University, Religious Holiday Calendar: https://ulife.gmu.edu/religious-holiday-calendar/ References on Tone and Language Use: https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/designing-inclusive-syllabus/ https://teachingcommons.stanford.edu/explore-teaching-guides/inclusive-teaching-guide/planning-inclusive-course/building-inclusive Sathy, V., & Hogan, K. A. (2022). Inclusive teaching: Strategies for promoting equity in the college classroom. West Virginia University Press. References on Readings and Resources in Syllabi: Sathy, V., & Hogan, K. A. (2022). Inclusive teaching: Strategies for promoting equity in the college classroom. https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/DiversityStatements Fuentes, M. A., Zelaya, D. G., & Madsen, J. W. (2021). Rethinking the course syllabus: Considerations for promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion. Teaching of Psychology, 48(1), 69-79. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0098628320959979 References on Activities and Assignments: Fuentes, M. A., Zelaya, D. G., & Madsen, J. W. (2021). Rethinking the course syllabus: Considerations for promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion. Teaching of Psychology, 48(1), 69-79. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0098628320959979 https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/DiversityStatements Sathy, V., & Hogan, K. A. (2022). Inclusive teaching: Strategies for promoting equity in the college classroom. Check out Episode 7 of Keystone Concepts in Teaching for more information on teaching multilingual learners: https://stearnscenter.gmu.edu/season-1-fall-2024-keystone-concepts-in-teaching/ References on Course Design:
listeners will get to Hear FromYour Host, Dr.
Rachel Yoho, about keystoneconcepts and teaching.
(00:55):
Dr.
Yoho is the Assistant Directorin the Stearns Center for
Teaching and Learning.
She is also a faculty affiliatein the Department of
Environmental Science andPolicy.
Dr.
Yoho and I will discuss thecourse syllabus and how we can
make our syllabus work better tosupport everyone in the space,
including the students and youas the instructor.
(01:18):
So, let's start with discussingthe purpose of the syllabus.
Rachel, can you tell us aboutthe potential multiple roles or
purposes of the syllabus?
Rachel (01:29):
So when we're talking
about our syllabus, we have a
number of things.
The syllabus is sort of a legaldocument, but not really.
And it's sort of anorganizational tool.
Well, it's mostly anorganizational tool, and it's
also sort of a means ofcommunication.
And so when we think about thepurposes of our syllabus, we
have lots of things going on.
(01:50):
We're not talking about thesyllabus as a contract or a
legal contract because it's notreally but it is sort of that
planning for the semester andplanning for what's going to
happen in the course.
Kelly (02:02):
Right.
Rachel (02:03):
Some of the things that
we don't think about as often
with the syllabus is that thesyllabus is also a public course
description.
It's that public face of what'sgoing to happen in our course
and something that we especiallyneed to be thinking about or
might be wanting to think aboutat a state institution.
We also have uses and, you know,I was a graduate program
(02:24):
director at my previousinstitution.
Some of the uses that we mightalso think about a little bit
less often are things liketransfer and equivalency.
So determining especially fortransfer students, what could be
used, what they took at aprevious institution, what meets
different requirements.
So really, we see a lot ofthings going on, and I think
that's really where we'relooking at how do we balance all
(02:47):
of this and also make it not 75pages long.
Kelly (02:51):
Yes, absolutely.
I would say I was a littleguilty of that.
Maybe not 75 pages.
Because you just get to a pointwhere a student will try
something new that you weren'texpecting before and next thing
you know you're like,"Ope, now Igotta put that in my syllabus."
Just keeps getting longer andlonger and longer.
Rachel (03:09):
Oh, you can definitely
see those you look at someone
else's syllabus like,"Oh, thathappened, huh?"
Kelly (03:14):
Exactly.
But I'm really interested inwhat we're saying here about how
the syllabus can support bothlearners and the instructors.
So what are some ways that thiscan be accomplished?
Rachel (03:28):
Yeah, so when we're
talking about our syllabus, it's
a great way to have that firstimpression space for the
students.
You know, what will this coursebe like?
What's this instructor like?
And what can the students expectduring the semester?
Not just what they're going todo and when they're going to do
it, but also, what's it going tobe like working with Dr.
Yoho over this, you know, numberof weeks?
(03:50):
And so, through the syllabus, wecan use this as a document, as a
tangible way to show ourapproach to teaching, what we
value, how we're looking tosupport our students through
their learning experiences, andhighlight other student focused
efforts, because as we're doingthis, you know, we want it
obviously to be a space for allof us, so planning is important.
(04:14):
And so overall, the syllabusreally is that essential
learning tool.
We're outlining expectations.
We're directing student effort.
We're also directing our effortand our timelines and our
feedback and grading, all ofthat.
And so overall, we're reallylooking at how we articulate the
course goals and the learningprogression.
You know, here we've reallyshifted away from sort of that
(04:36):
university business side of thesyllabus and really get into the
educational purposes with oursyllabus.
Kelly (04:44):
Absolutely, I hear you on
that balancing act of taking
care of our students, of course,with our syllabus, but also
ourselves.
So it seems like you werealready kind of approaching
this, but I want to ask apointed question of what are
some of the kind of core areasof a syllabus where we can focus
on inclusive approaches?
Rachel (05:04):
There are a lot of
different areas that we can
certainly think about and lookat, but a few of those that I
want to talk about right now arethinking about our course
policies, as well as ourreadings and resources.
And the course policies, forinstance, might be things that
we automatically go to.
That's probably one of thesections that our students, if
they look at the syllabus, arejumping right to what's the late
(05:27):
policy, for instance.
Kelly (05:29):
Oh, yeah.
Rachel (05:31):
But some of our
policies, we might be thinking
about the workload.
That's both for our students andourselves.
Again, that grading, thefeedback, the timelines.
But we also, of course, might bethinking about the late policy,
and there's a number of ways wemight be looking at, and we've
mentioned in some of our earlierepisodes, different approaches
to late policies, the LifeHappens Pass was mentioned in
(05:53):
one of our first episodes by Dr.
Shelley Reid.
But we might also be thinkingabout some of our policies
around, for instance, holidays,like different dates, how we
schedule our course, as well asthings like religious
observances.
So, for instance, George MasonUniversity puts out a calendar,
so we can keep in mind differentmajor holidays for different
religions.
(06:14):
But we also might be thinkingabout the modality of our
course.
We might be thinking aboutindividual needs.
If we're teaching an onlinesynchronous course, so something
on Zoom, we might be thinkingabout camera policies.
You know, not every bit ofengagement perhaps needs to be
people staring into a camera,but maybe there are other ways
to contribute.
Or we might think aboutcaregiving needs or chronic
(06:37):
illness or things like that ofhow we look at building in
flexibility or building inunderstanding, just awareness
that we're all people in thesespaces and things happen not
only for us but also for ourstudents and how we can approach
our course policies from thatsort of understanding.
But really here it's looking athow we might demonstrate our
values and our approaches.
(06:58):
So that might be openness orflexibility or communication,
any of those types of things.
Kelly (07:05):
I want to ask, along
these same lines, I've seen some
talk about tone in syllabus.
Is this kind of related to thatflexibility and policy writing?
How might we work that into oursyllabus?
What do they mean when they saytone?
Rachel (07:21):
Absolutely.
I think tone is probably one ofthe most important things that
we can think about in oursyllabus and we can work on
without actually changingcontent.
So, essentially, when we'retalking about tone or language,
we're considering what's beingsaid as well as how it's being
said.
And so again, this is a greatway to demonstrate our
(07:43):
commitment to shared values, toour students' learning and
create a really nice atmosphere.
And so some examples of this areconsidering the balance between
warm and cold language use.
So there's some great exampleshere that we' ll be sharing the
resources and the sources in theshow notes, but some examples of
(08:03):
cold language, for instance,would be things like,"If you
need to contact me outside ofclass..." That definitely may
have the underlying,"Don'tcontact me."
Kelly (08:11):
Yeah
Rachel (08:12):
Maybe that's not what we
mean.
Please don't mean that.
We might warm that up a littlebit with,"I welcome you to
contact me outside of class," orsomething like,"When you need
assistance, I encourage you tocontact me in these ways."
Anything like that.
Or we have another example like,"Late work will be penalized by
50%." That's a lot, but we canwarm that up and say the exact
(08:37):
same thing by saying that"Latework is still eligible for 50
percent partial credit." So it'sexactly the same content.
Like, we didn't change thepolicy in any way.
It's just how it's being said.
Kelly (08:49):
Mm.
That makes sense.
Rachel (08:51):
And the tone thing also
works for all caps[capitals]
writing.
You know, there are differentways to bring attention to
words.
So that's, you know, bold orunderlining or italics or, you
know, any of these things.
All caps writing, especially forpeople who are very online, in
different spaces and socialmedia and things, all caps
writing is generally understoodas like shouting or yelling.
(09:14):
And so, avoiding all capswriting, like, we don't need to
yell our policies at ourstudents, even metaphorically.
But, you know, maybe we look atunderlining, or putting
something in bold that we wantto particularly highlight.
Kelly (09:28):
Right.
And I think at one point youwere talking about inclusive
approaches for readings.
You had mentioned that.
Did you want to speak more towhat you were saying there?
Rachel (09:38):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, when we're thinkingabout our readings and our
resources, those can often feellike a pretty stagnant thing
unless we're like,"Okay, I'mredoing the whole course." And
essentially, we might be askingourselves, whose voices are
being heard and whose voices arenot being heard?
Does the course contentrepresent a diversity of voices
(10:00):
in any number of aspects ofdiversity, of course?
So we might be looking atincorporating some other ways.
Certainly not just continuallyadding to our readings, like
that's not good for anyone,including, uh, us.
But we might have different waysto highlight current
practitioners in the field, orwe might bring in a video, we
might bring in something elseduring class, or might have
(10:23):
these conversations with ourstudents of whose voices are
typically heard and whose voicesare less heard.
But also as we think about thereadings and the resources, we
might also be looking at thecost of textbooks, for instance,
or the cost of software access,or whatever the thing is in your
(10:44):
course to purchase.
And so open access materials, orreally just thinking about the
accessibility of differentresources or content can be
really useful and a great way tomake this space more accessible
to everyone.
Kelly (11:02):
Absolutely.
I love that.
I will never forget my firstyear at university, I had to
purchase your typical Biology101 book.
It was huge, heavy, and then atthe end of the semester, when I
went back to the bookstore toresell it, because that's
something you used to do backthen, they were willing to offer
(11:22):
me one cent, literally.
One penny.
When we had paid, I think, over200 dollars for the book,
because the next semester wasgoing to be a new edition of
that book.
So mine was rendered useless.
That was whew.
Interesting.
So I wanted to kind of switchgears a little bit here and then
(11:44):
talk about one of the thingsstudents are also most worried
about, so what about theactivities and assignments?
How might we include these inour syllabus in a way that
supports both, you know,students and instructors?
Rachel (12:00):
Yeah, that's another
area our students are often
probably likely to look atwithin the syllabus.
And so we might be thinkingabout things like discussions.
We might be especiallyconsidering the added importance
and the extra focus on civildiscourse and what's being said
(12:20):
and what's going on and freespeech and things we're not
going to solve today.
But we might be thinking abouthow we work with our students,
and especially to cocreate somediscussion ground rules, or
classroom guidelines, orcommunity expectations, or
they're all the same thing, nomatter what you want to call
them there.
But we can review those,certainly, with our students.
(12:41):
We can use that kind ofstructure to intervene when we
need to jump in during a, forinstance, a live class
discussion, or even if we'reteaching fully asynchronous
online.
Even jump in on a discussionboard post, for instance.
And so this might be an areawhere we are designing
assignments that the studentscould have a little bit more
(13:01):
choice, a little bit moreautonomy in terms of a specific
topic or focus area.
We might also in certain cases,certainly not across the board,
but we might have the ability,on specific activities to have
different types of contentsubmissions.
So having a little bit moreagency for the students in terms
of how they demonstrate theirlearning.
(13:24):
So again, not across everything,but maybe in one or two
activities in the course, theyhave the option to do, you know,
X or Y activity, or they can,for instance, they might write,
a paper of X amount of length,or they might create a video of
Y duration, something like that.
But also with our activities oreven our examples, in some of
(13:46):
our lectures or our content, wemight think about and we might
look at some of the names or theterms that are used in those, so
like whose names are being used,whose names are not being used.
Not our students names, butexample people in, in
activities, for instance.
We might also think about how welook at our terms.
Are we using the same wordconsistently?
(14:08):
Especially for multilinguallearners.
changing up how we say the samething, just to make it more
vocally interesting is not agreat instructional approach.
So consistency in our terms, notonly in our syllabus, but then
in our discussion, our lecturerecordings, live lectures,
whatever that looks like.
But also we could just talk to acolleague or get some student
(14:29):
feedback on some of these thingsas well.
The other one I will mentionhere is thinking about group
work.
Group work is such a challengefor everyone, but we can do a
few things to help our studentsbecause working with others is
incredibly important.
I can't think of manyprofessions where you don't have
to work with other people, andit's just a good life skill
(14:52):
anyway, And so the ways we canscaffold the group work.
So thinking about how we helpthe students interact with each
other, how we help them interactproductively, and also having
some check ins, someopportunities for feedback.
You know, we don't want to getinto those situations, which
many instructors may have beenin, in the past where you get to
(15:13):
the end of the semester and youfind out that group was wildly
dysfunctional.
And I didn't know it.
Kelly (15:19):
Haha, yeah.
Rachel (15:20):
And that's not where we
want to be because that's not a
good experience for anyone inthe space.
It's not a good learningexperience.
So the more we can check in thatwe facilitate the discussion
with some guided questions andsome structure can really help.
Kelly (15:34):
Absolutely.
If we're talking about syllabisupporting learners and
instructors (15:38):
whenever you are
differentiating your assignments
and giving those differentoptions for how they can
accomplish that assignment, Ican hear some instructors
thinking,"Well, that's extrawork for me.
Now I have to design threedifferent assignments versus
just one." What might be yourresponse to someone who might be
(15:59):
thinking that?
Rachel (16:00):
Yeah, it's a great
point, but I don't think we have
to design three.
So, for instance, we might givethe students a prompt, you know,
we might be saying, create asolution to this problem and
provide evidence, whatever thatlooks like in your field.
But you can demonstrate that,you can show, you can submit
this using a number of differentmodalities.
(16:22):
So, that could be the paper,that could be the infographic,
that could be the video.
But what's really key there arethe bounds.
It needs to be of this length,of this duration, of this level
of detail, you know, anythinglike that.
I've, you know, learned from mymistakes, folks.
So that's really the key there,is having the options.
(16:42):
So it doesn't have to be threedifferent assignments, but just
options for how they can submitit.
And honestly, this is a greatinclusive thing for us as the
instructor because oh mygoodness, it can make it so much
more interesting to grade.
Because we're not grading 50 ofthe exact same paper.
Okay, hopefully they're notexactly the same.
(17:03):
But, we're not grading 50 of theessentially same thing.
That is boring, but if we'rehaving the students, they can
take more ownership.
They can be a whole lot moreinteresting.
They can be really engaging,which obviously isn't our goal.
It's a good learning experience,but it's not a bad thing either
to have the grading, have theexperience be better for
everyone.
Kelly (17:24):
Right..
And I think you would agree thatwhat I don't hear you saying is
that every single assignment hasto have multiple options.
This is something that you mightdo once, maybe twice, for one or
maybe two assignments in asemester.
Rachel (17:39):
Yeah, so the way I've
done this before is a number of
different activities through thesemester.
Let's say I had, maybe six,let's call it six different
activities.
In each of them I might havesomething different, so it might
be they're writing, whatever theactivity is, and they can choose
a little bit on the topic, soI'll give them a few topics to
choose among.
Or in one or two activities,they might be able to do a video
(18:05):
or a paper, something like that.
So we're just doing littlethings here and there, and it
creates a little variation,which is nice for everyone.
But it's not a big thing, andthis is a place to start with
maybe one activity, like yousaid, Kelly.
It's not, let's do all of them.
That's overwhelming.
Kelly (18:23):
Right, right.
So, here we're talking aboutdesigning assignments, so I feel
like let's take a couple stepsback, think a bit larger here,
and you start with designingthings even before you put
together your syllabus, and sowhat are some of the ways that
the design of our course overallcan appear in the syllabus?
Rachel (18:45):
Yeah.
So here we're also consideringaccessibility beyond the legal
requirements.
Of course, there are bareminimums that we have to do.
We're certainly not saying like,"Okay, let's stop there." But
how do we level that up?
Because that's also a great wayto have fewer assignment
modifications based onparticular accessibility needs
(19:07):
or student disabilityaccommodation needs.
Kelly (19:11):
Well, speaking of
modifications, adjustments,
alternatives, I can hear somepeople wondering about how to
address what may be somepotential barriers to syllabus
modifications that instructorsmight be up against.
Rachel (19:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
We have quite a number of those.
Like, let's be honest, there's alot of things and a lot of
people, and a lot of differentrequirements out there.
So depending on what type ofprogram we're in, what type of
college we're in, any of thosethings.
And so some of the barriers wemight have might be things like
(19:48):
having secondary accreditation.
So if you're in a program likeengineering that has ABET or
public health, those differenttypes of programs, as well as
many others, have a secondaryaccreditation that may have very
particular expectations forlearning outcomes, for what
students are doing and when.
We might also have the potentialbarriers of, you know, so and so
(20:09):
colleague down the hall.
Right?
Kelly (20:12):
Right.
Rachel (20:13):
We're teaching multiple
sections, or we have multiple
instructors, and there needs tobe some sort of consistency,
getting people on board.
But we can have thoseconversations if we're looking
at, perhaps, beginning somediscussions with colleagues
about ideas or plans or what canwe change in this section that
(20:35):
we keep consistent with theothers.
But we also might look at how wetry out new things, again, those
are department level, those arecourse level navigation types of
activities.
We might also have the majorbarrier of curriculum
committees, or maybe it's so andso associate dean in your area,
(20:59):
that is the person who has theirhand very heavily on top of a
syllabus, if you will.
And so we might look atconsidering the committee's
priorities, the timelines forreview, and especially how we
might apply innovations thatdon't need a committee review
first.
So we're not out here throwingout new learning outcomes for
the course, but we're looking atmaybe are there ways to tweak an
(21:23):
assignment or something likethat.
Maybe there are ways to, again,talk with the people we need to
and see what can I change, whatshouldn't I change right now,
and really prioritize thegreatest needs first and then
see what's needed to submit forapproval.
Kelly (21:40):
Well, I think we have
certainly covered a lot about
syllabi today.
As we do for every episode, Iwanted to ask if you could talk
a little bit about how thisconversation represents a
keystone concept in teaching.
Rachel (21:57):
I think it really
relates to how we are looking at
continuous improvement.
We can look at our syllabus asthis thing that we just get out
and we update the dates, which,you know, it can be perfectly
legitimate for that newsemester.
But we can also look at is theresomething small we can do in
that small changes model that wetalk about in the Stearns Center
(22:18):
for Teaching and Learning?
Is there something new we cantry in maybe one or two little
places?
Can we try that out?
Can we see how it goes?
Because honestly, not everyinclusive teaching or every
evidence based teaching practiceor idea or structure or plan
will work for every course.
But there are many influences oncourse design, and those will
(22:41):
impact what's possible, orprobable, or any of those
things.
Kelly (22:46):
Yes.
Love that.
All right, well, thank you, Dr.
Yoho, for your insights today.
Rachel (22:52):
Absolutely.
It was great to be on this sideof the microphone.
Kelly (22:55):
I love it.
I love it.
And we want to thank youlisteners for joining Dr.
Yoho and I in our first HearFrom Your Host episode.
We would also like to take thisopportunity to thank everyone
listening during our firstseason of Keystone Concepts in
Teaching.
(23:15):
We hope you'll join us nextseason to hear from more new
guests as we explore teachingand learning small change
strategies that can be appliedacross disciplines and
instructional modalities.
In the meantime, you can visitour website at Stearnscenter.
gmu.
edu for more resources andopportunities to engage with us.
(23:38):
See you next season!